Porco Rosso (1992)

Original title: 紅の豚, Kurenai no Buta

A somewhat different Italy, though still one ruled by the fascists, between the wars. An anthropomorphic pig and genius pilot usually known as Porco Rosso, not a friend of the fascists, lives half in hiding on an Adriatic island, working as a bounty hunter fighting against the local tribes of pretty goofy sky pirates. Porco is a bit of a standoffish guy, but then, he hasn’t always been a pig person but has been turned into one through some sort of curse or spell, and this sort of thing does tend to make guy a bit reticent. Add to that his experience in World War I, and that the handful of friends who survived it have been dying like flies in the last couple of years or went fascist, and you can see where he’s coming from. There’s also a tragic romance between him and a nightclub singer.

Anyway, his pursuits in the sky have angered the various groups of sky pirates so much, they have hired American ace pilot Curtis – a guy of dubious morals dreaming of a film career as a stepping stone to becoming president of the US – to get rid of Porco for good. Curtis does manage to ambush Porco when our hero is on his way to Milan for repairs and nearly destroys his plane completely. Porco does manage to make his way to Milan and the old mechanic friend he knows there eventually. His old friend tasks his seventeen year old granddaughter Fiona with doing the design and leading the improvement work, something the not exactly feminist Porco at first isn’t terribly happy about – until he sees Fiona’s work and slowly begins to appreciate the young woman’s character too. Together, they might even survive a rematch with Curtis.

Usually, Porco Rosso is treated as one of the odd pigs out among Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli films, so much so that I haven’t even been bothering with the film at all before he went up on Netflix. That turns out to have been rather a large mistake, though, for while the film at hand might not have quite the emotional drawing power of a Spirited Away, it is very much a film filled with the joy of a director playing with many things he is particular enthuasistic about. In this case, these enthusiasms are centred on planes and the Golden Age of Aviation (though the film is actually set rather late for this particular love), and old Hollywood. There is a surprising amount of Casablanca in here, but also quite a few moments that reminded me of the Marx Brothers and Howard Hawks. Miyazaki definitely shares Hawks’s appreciation for professionals doing professional work, but not so typical of Hawks (though not unheard of in that man’s films either), the best demonstrations of this in the film concern women working – Fiona reconstructing Porco’s plane in scenes that suggest what kind of woman this particular late teen will grow up into, and the female members of her family (the men are all gone somewhere else in hopes of paying work) doing the actual manual labour involved.


There’s a sense of delicate melancholy and a bit of a quietly tragic world view hidden away in the movie too, not the chest-beating variety of youth but a calm, accepting one that comes from a certain experience of life and what it entails. It’s not all melancholy, of course, for there’s also a lot of slapstick concerning the very funny pirates, more little lovely side gags than you can shake a pig sticker at, and an aeroplane and adventure plot that glows with enthusiasm, Miyazaki creating a sibling of the tone of his Lupin III films in those scenes.

Three Films Make A Post: We'll do it every year..until we get it right

Home for the Holidays (1995): It’s a bit of a shame that Jodie Foster has been doing only a little direction work in her career, for she’s a rather great director, in the unassuming way that treats the job of a director as mainly concerned with helping a script and the actors bringing it to life breathe; there’s really no vanity in her direction here but a lot of focus. The ensemble cast – led by a typically wonderful Holly Hunter – clearly thanks her for it, going through family relations painful, loving, complicated and darkly funny with the same focus. One might say that a film about a holiday bringing together a disparate bourgeois family and letting the cracks show isn’t exactly news (and wasn’t in 1995 either), but Foster is excellent at turning the commonplace and unspecific concept of “bourgeois family” into something very specific. And you know what they say about unhappy families.

The She Beast (1966): This first of three full features in the tragically short career of director Michael Reeves is a bit of a mess, clearly having difficulties deciding if it is a comedy, a gothic horror film, some kind of satire, or a mixture of all of these things. Seen separately, any given scene – particularly those indebted to Italian gothic horror - shows Reeves’s talent, but they never truly cohere into a full film. There are also some peculiar decisions: why hide Barbara Steele, who is basically playing the same kind of role she did in a lot of Italian gothic horror films, under a conceptually creepy but actually pretty crappy looking mask when her possession is really taking hold, when her body of work already shows that she doesn’t have need of this sort of thing? Is the fearless vampire hunter supposed to be a rip-off of Polanski’s film? What is it with witch possession and lakes?


My Neighbour Totoro (1988): This is one of the younger skewing Miyazaki Ghibli films with a couple more moments that seem more childish than childlike than in most of Miyazaki’s work. However, apart from looking pretty damn beautiful, this also features some of the most beautiful depictions of childlike wonder I’ve ever encountered, as well as a deft portrayal of children as actual children. And as with all things Miyazaki, there’s also a knowledge of the sad realities of life in the film. Not one that ever overwhelms it, its wonder, or its child protagonists, but one that very well knows that everything’s eventual, yet beautiful and important because of that. Plus, there’s the cat bus, and how can anyone not love a movie containing that?

Three Anime Make A Post: They threatened his world. He will destroy theirs.

Kiki's Delivery Service aka 魔女の宅急便 (1989): An easy psychological test for weeding out people with whom something is dangerously wrong is finding out their opinion about Studio Ghibli movies, particularly classic ones like this directed by the great Hayao Miyazaki. If one doesn’t like these films they are not to be trusted.

The particular beauty of Kiki is how easily Miyazaki turns what would in lesser hands be a very rote story of growing up with very obvious valuable lessons to learn into a tale that’s not just charming as all get out but also suggests complexities in the character of its (barely) teen witch protagonist as well as in the world around her, never treating the elements that have clear metaphorical uses only as metaphor and never pretending inner or outer life were simple.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower aka メアリと魔女の花 (2017): While also pretty damn charming and imaginative for most of its running time, not quite on the level of classic Ghibli is this Mary Stewart adaptation by former Ghibli director (and owner of a particularly impressive name) Hiromasa Yonebayashi. It is a lovely example of the art of all ages anime, don’t get me wrong, it just becomes somewhat lesser in the direct comparison the very Ghibli-like style of the production can’t help but  invite. The difference here really is a comparative lack of that internal complexity I just praised Kiki for, Mary’s process of growing up never suggesting more than the most superficial internal struggle adding to the outer one, and a world that simply feels a bit flatter and simpler then in the best anime of this style.


Your Name aka 君の名は。(2016): Your Name’s director Makoto Shinkai has made at least one film very much beholden to the Ghibli style, too, to not terribly great effect, if I remember right, but at least this film is not at all interested in that comparison but goes aesthetic and philosophical ways all of its own. On paper, this is a bit of a science fictional romance weepie – and weep indeed I did watching it – so you could accuse it of focussing on emotional manipulation. However, it manipulates the audience’s emotions for good, perfectly encapsulating a feeling of emotionally big young love from afar, while also thinking surprisingly deeply about questions of fate and random chance, the gravity of distance (in a way only possible in the genres of the fantastic) and about the responsibilities of being human. These thematic concerns are  all effectively wrapped in a lot of tear-stained hankies, while also presenting a true sense of awe about the world as well as about  the human heart.

In short: Lupin the Third - The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

Some time before Hayao Miyazaki was HAYAO MIYAZAKI, he spent his time making films like this.

"This" being an adventure of the grandson of Arsene Lupin who has more or less gone into the family business as thief of the charming (and decidedly non-evil) persuasion. When a casino heist leaves Lupin and his partner Jigen with nothing more than a bunch of counterfeit bank notes, Lupin travels to the small European country of Cagliostro (stop laughing, or I'll deport you to Casanova), known as the secret center of international counterfeiting.

Once there, he finds something more interesting to do with his time than searching for fake money - there's a local princess to save from the clutches of an evil count and an ancient hidden treasure to find, while fighting against steel-clawed private armies, dealing with copious amounts of death traps and avoiding Interpol Inspector Zenigata. The counterfeits will also have a role to play, of course

First and foremost, The Castle of Cagliostro is just a whole bunch of fun, throwing together bits and pieces of caper movies, 60s spy films, bad melodrama Europeana, gothic kitsch and just about everything else Miyazaki could get his hands on with wild abandon and an undeniable sense of glee, mixed with charm and the sure pacing of the old pro Miyazaki already was at the time until everything coagulates into a ball of concentrated awesome. Just imagine an anime version of the ideal Eurospy/caper movie nobody ever made, multiply it with ten and you have this very fine movie.

 

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